With the prevalence of online shopping for items, it can be difficult for franchise owners at times to get individuals to come to their standing retail locations. Finding ways to engage and interest your customers is a way that you can differentiate your TintWorld® national franchise from your competitors, both locally and online.

One great way to engage with your customers is to create an environment that is welcoming, helpful, pleasing and offers them a feeling of enjoyment when they come to your location. To help drive more engagement with your franchise location visitors, consider using these ideas on how to use the senses for your location.

Tips to engage the five senses in your retail franchise location:

Sense of Smell: If you offer anything with pleasing aromas, such as coffee, put out open bins for shoppers to smell. You can also consider using vanilla or other pleasing scents to engage the shopper’s sense of smell. Don’t overdo it, though, as overpowering smells can backfire.

Sense of Taste: Offer free beverages or a bowl of hard candy on the counter. Hold a wine and cheese tasting to celebrate a new product line or a special company anniversary to make customers feel welcome!

Sense of Sight: An open store layout with pleasing displays is a must, starting with the front door or window display. Bright, eye-catching digital monitor signs or products and services banners can add visual punch. Cleanliness is part of the visual appeal, too, so make your place of business spotless.

Sense of Touch: Supply product samples for customers to feel for themselves. Make things accessible for customers to touch (except for fragile things). Use your interactive showroom displays to feature your products. Remember that when goods aren’t accessible, even as a sample, there’s an invisible buying barrier that can be off-putting to customers.

Sense of Hearing: Soothing music to mask street sounds makes for an enthusiastic and relaxing environment. Eliminate negative sounds, too. Don’t allow employees to talk on mobile phones, gossip, or gab in groups in front of customers.

Finding ways to engage with the customers of your TintWorld® franchise location can extend beyond advertising and marketing your location. Connecting with your customers in a new and unique way by appealing to their senses can help create a positive experience for your franchise and help keep your customers engaged and returning again and again!

Every single business has competition. Some businesses will market similar products and services; others will target the exact same audience; therefore, it makes perfect sense that studying your competition and understanding the results can improve the position of your products and services and audience engagement. Your business can improve by the simple act of studying and understanding your competition, and how you can differentiate your TintWorld® national franchise from your competition.

There is no competition that is going to be exactly the same as your TintWorld® franchise and you are unique; any competitors you may have will be different, even if they are selling similar products.

Identify the ways in which your TintWorld® products and services are different and figure out exactly what is different, so that you can determine why your overall business, products and services are better and different enough to make your business stand out from your competitors to market them to your audience.

Find Out What Ways Your Competition Markets to Their Audience

Do they use social media, online advertising, content marketing, email marketing, trade shows, car dealers, chamber of commerce or some other means to get the word out about their companies’ products and services? Ask yourself if they are successful and if so, what are they doing well?

Find Out If Their Product and Services Are the Same as Yours and How

Is there something about their product and services that could be confused with yours? If so, how can you make yours stand out and how can you improve or portray that you are one step ahead of them in terms of the quality of Product and Services that you deliver?

How Does Your Competition’s Prices Compare to Yours?

Are they less expensive or more expensive than you? Why? Is there anything you can do in order to change your own price to make your products stand out better? If they are cheaper, can you make your products and customer service better so that the issue of price is not a factor?

How Does Your Competition Use Their Website to Market Their Products?

Check out every aspect of your competitors’ website, from the design layout to the words on the page. Do they have a newsletter sign-up? Do they offer a freebie giveaway? Do they have a blog? Can you see their sales funnel? Try to work out how they are using their website on the whole to market their business.

How Does Your Competition Use Social Media?

Do your competitors have social media engagement and follows on their website? What social media platforms are they active on? Do they use share buttons on their blog posts? Are they answering questions on social media and engaging with their audience? Knowing how your competition uses and misuses social media can help you become better at using it.

What Type of Content Is on Their Website?

Is your competition using content marketing on their website that is keyword rich? Can you figure out the keywords they are using? Do they use a variety of different forms of content such as text, video, infographics and so forth? Is this engaging comments and interaction with their audience?

How Often Do They Update Content?

Is the content updated often and if so, how often? Is the audience commenting on, liking and sharing their website content regularly? Does your competition share their content updates via social media, email newsletter and other means and Re you or can you do it better?

There is no point in studying your competition once and then sitting back relaxing. Instead, take the time to regularly look for new competition and check out your old competition to make sure things haven’t changed since you last looked. You never know what you can glean from the information you collect. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to continue following and observing your competition at all times in order to stay abreast of your industry and to allow you to see opportunities as they arise.